Council and Democracy

Corporate Equality and Diversity Group (CEDG)

Aim

The key role of CEDG is to coordinate and provide strategic direction on the Council’s Equality and Diversity agenda and ensure that the Council complies with legislative duties.

Objectives

• Provide strategic direction for the Council in its role as a community leader, service provider and an employer.
• Addressing key corporate equality and diversity priorities/issues and ensure that appropriate action is taken
• Ensuring that appropriate resources are made available to address key priorities
• Monitoring progress on achieving corporate equality and diversity objectives and targets and oversee the Council’s Equality Duties
• Reporting progress to Corporate Management Team, Safer and Stronger Communities Improvement Committee and Equalities Forum
• Providing leadership to Council departments to develop inclusive practices

Key Tasks include:

• Advising on the effectiveness of infrastructure to deliver the equality and diversity agenda.
• Receiving reports from Departments on progress made in mainstreaming equality and diversity, in particular on the Equality Framework for Local Government, Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) and how these have been used to develop equality actions under the five priorities identified in the Equality and Diversity Strategy.
• Acting in a ‘scrutiny’ role by checking random completed equality impact assessments.
• Providing support in the Peer Challenge assessment towards the ‘excellent’ level of the Equality Framework for Local Government.
• Monitoring the self-assessment by departments against the excellent level of the Equality Framework for Local Government.
• Ensuring mechanisms are in place to address the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) key lines of enquiry in relation to equality and diversity.
• Sharing good practice and discussing any areas of concern about equalities, and looking at ways of dealing with them.

Membership

The Group is chaired by a Strategic Director: membership comprises of an Assistant Director or their nominated Equality Champion from each department, with additional representatives from Human Resources, Legal Services representative (when necessary), Trade Union representatives Cohesion and Inclusion Team representatives and Specialist and co-opted officers (as appropriate).

Meetings

The Corporate Equality and Diversity Group meets quarterly.

Bradford District Partnership (BDP)

The BDP is the Local Strategic Partnership for the Bradford District. For more information on the BDP and its work, please visit the BDP website.

Equality Engagement Framework (EEF)

The Equalities Engagement Framework is a constituent part of the overall Bradford District Engagement Framework. The Engagement Framework has three routes into the District’s partnership structure through:

1. Theme - Partnership and Service Engagement
2. Place - Neighbourhood Engagement
3. People - Equalities Engagement

Equalities Engagement is vital within a context where many people’s identity and life experience is as much with a community of interest as with the place where they live

The Equalities Engagement Framework replicates similar structures to those being developed for Theme and Place

An effective Equalities Engagement structure needs to ensure that issues are able to flow from individual communities of interest to the places where actions can be taken to resolve them and reporting the outcome back. Some communities of interest are less developed than others and require more specialised support to ensure their engagement.

The following three levels are required to enable communities to have a voice and engage with a process that will lead to positive outcomes.

1. Community Level - The grass roots level of people from communities of interest coming together and forming groups to improve something in relation to their community. New and emerging communities will require support to build their capacity.
2. Network Level - Groups from particular communities networking together to increase their influence.
3. Actioning or Partnership Level - Actions to move forward and find solutions

The group considered the six equality strands (Race, Disability, Gender, Faith, Sexual Orientation and Age) recognised nationally and the organisations that currently support these within the Bradford District). There was also some discussion that some communities of interest do not fit neatly within these and it might be useful to consider a seventh theme (socially excluded groups).

The following list is of the six currently recognised equality strands and the name of the network that is currently fulfilling this role within the Bradford District.

1. Disability - Bradford Disabled People’s Forum
2. Race - Consortia of Ethnic Minority Organisations
3. Gender - Women’s Community Partnership
4. Religion and Belief - Bradford and District Faith Forum
5. Sexual Orientation - Equality Partnership
6. Age (Older People) - Bradford Older People’s Alliance

The above six networks are all able to undertake the network (as described) function within their existing funding until at least end of March 2011.

Age, there is no inclusion of children and young people as an equality network as this is included within partnership arrangements within the Children and Young People’s Partnership

Equalities Engagement structure to include targeted development work with COIs to enable participation. Currently (October 2009) the following are identified groups with specific needs:

1. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities
2. Women Involved in Prostitution
3. Refugees and Asylum seekers
4. EU Migrant workers

The Actioning/ Partnership level is responsible for working with the issues raised within the networks in the most appropriate way. Approaches and mechanisms are, of necessity, flexible. This includes forming time specific working groups (with all relevant stakeholders), working with a service provider to provide a response etc. or the sustaining of an existing partnership, as is the case with the Strategic Disability Partnership and the Older People’s Partnership. The actioning work is progressed by a named officer within the Safer and Communities Service who is also responsible for feeding back to the network the outcome. The list of actioning mechanisms is as follows:

1. Disability - Strategic Disability Partnership
2. Race - Named officer within Human Resources Service
3. Gender - Named officer within Neighbourhood Services
4. Religion and Belief - Named officer within Human Resources Centre
5. Sexual orientation - Named officer within Human Resources Centre
6. Older People - Older People’s Partnership

The EEF supports the inclusion of the six equality strands into the Voluntary and Community Sector Assembly and Forums, including the Equality Forum, which was established in February 2011.

The Stronger Communities Equalities Delivery Group and Stronger Communities Partnership have responsibility for implementing, monitoring and evaluating the Equalities Engagement Framework